Atlanta Metro School Suit: A Search for Equality

By Marcia Cross-Briscoe

Vol. 1, No. 2, 1978, pp. 11-12

Atlanta may be “the city too busy to hate” but its process of desegregating its public school system reflects the trends of most communities in the South since the Brown decision in 1954. Between 1958 and 1973 five desegregation lawsuits were filed against school systems in metro Atlanta, and one is still pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Emma Armour v. Jack P. Nix has been referred to as the “Metro suit” because the city of Atlanta and six surrounding counties were first charged with segregation in public education. The Compromise Plan of 1973 which stemmed from an earlier case, Calhoun v. Cook, was supposed to solve this problem; however, the proposed remedies did not significantly integrate the public schools. Roughly 20 all-White schools were integrated but the remaining Black schools, which were in the majority, were left untouched by the plan.

Several national leaders of the NAACP spoke out against the compromise which was created by the Board of Education of Atlanta and the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP. They charged that it violated national NAACP policy by leaving Black students in segregated schools. However, the plan was approved and busing of some 5,000 students to White schools occurred.

The Metro suit was filed in June of 1972 by parents who felt that their children were not receiving an adequate education in the Atlanta public schools. Mrs. Ethel Mathews, a plaintiff in the suit, said, “What we are searching for is equality for our children and the Metro suit is the only way to get it.” The case was not presented before a judge until November 1977 because the court was awaiting the decision in a similiar case in Richmond, Va. During those 5 years some of the parents who had filed the suit moved from the city or had their children transferred to other schools within the area. Attorneys from the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are representing the plaintiffs in the suit. They are seeking a metropolitan remedy whereby students would be transferred across city and county lines for the purpose of desegregating all the schools. A decision from the Court is likely by the end of 1978.

In the three days of hearings in November, the attorneys tried to prove that residential segregation exists in the metropolitan area and was deliberately created by actions of the State of Georgia operating through its governmental agencies. They presented evidence to support the fact that in 1924 the city of Atlanta created residential apartheid by enacting a zoning ordinance which designated the western corridor of Atlanta as a Black area. The North Avenue-Ponce de Leon “line” was also designated as a racial residential line, and the area north of this line was maintained for Whites only. Thus, schools remained segregated due to housing patterns created by government.

The plaintiffs further tried to establish the existence of a true metropolitan area. Their controversial, expert witness, Dr. Karl Taeuber, an urban sociologist, testified that “the Atlanta metropolitan area is an integrated social, economic and market area and the segregative actions of government in one portion of the area have and have had a segregative effect in all other portions of the area.”

The defendants testimony was heard in March at which time the attorneys for the various school systems tried to get their clients dismissed from the case. Of the original 11 defendants, only four remain. The court ruled that there was an “absence of significant interdistrict effects” to warrant the inclusion of Clayton, Cobb, Douglas, and Gwinnett counties, and the cities of Buford, Decatur and Marietta in the suit. Only the city of Atlanta, Fulton county, and DeKalb county, and the state of Georgia remain defendants in the case.

However, recent findings by David Armor, a witness for the defendants, support the plaintiffs rationale for a metropolitan remedy. In a report entitled “White Flight, Demographic Transition and the Future of School Desegregation,” he found that desegregation can cause accelerated White flight, particularly in larger school districts with substantial minority enrollment (20%) and in districts with accessible White suburbs. Armor showed that in Florida school districts where metropolitan desegregation plans are in effect, there is very little White flight to the suburbs as opposed to school districts where only inner-city desegregation is occuring.

Proposed remedies for desegregating the Atlanta area are a significant part of the case; however, they were not allowed to be introduced into the plaintiffs’ testimony. At present under the Compromise, a student can participate in a program called the Majority to Minority (M&M) Program. He may choose to transfer from a school where his race is in the majority to one where his race is in the minority. These voluntary transfers are not working as effectively as possible, however, because only Black students are choosing to go to schools where their race is in the minority, and they are being put on waiting lists to get into White schools that are supposed to accommodate them because of this program.

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Attorneys for the plaintiffs in Armour propose the creation of different types of schools which are ideally suited for an area such as Atlanta. Government management centers, health practice centers, design centers, linguistic skills centers, and an aviation center could all be implemented if a metropolitan remedy were ordered for Atlanta, Fulton County and DeKalb County.

“This is not a busing case,” said Margie Hames, attorney for the plaintiffs. Alternatives to busing which could be implemented are expanded neighborhood schools, clustering schools, magnet schools, and the use of drop off schools by commuters from the suburbs.

The controlling law on metropolitan school desegregation is set forth in the Detroit, Wilmington, Del., and Louisville, Ky. cases. In the Wilmington case, Evans v. Buchanon, originally filed in 1957, the majority opinion of the court required inter-district busing. The details of their desegregation plan have not been completely worked out, but it will probably have a bearing on Atlanta’s plan should the court rule in favor of a metropolitan remedy.

Several factors make this suit controversial. For one thing, under the Compromise plan, a new organizational structure of the school system was created. Blacks were put into key administrative positions for the first time. According to Dr. Barbara Jackson of Atlanta University’s School of Education, a metropolitan desegregation plan might dilute the hard-won power of Blacks in the Atlanta school system. Whites would likely become the majority decision-makers in a cross-country plan.

The recent trend of White movement back into the city is another factor that influences the character of the case. Presently, Atlanta has a majority Black population and the public schools are predominately Black. However, many young White families are moving into the city and want to send their children to public schools, thus decreasing the press for a metropolitan remedy.

The issue of morality is a concern. Dr. Benjamin Mays, president of the Atlanta Board of Education, testified for the defendants that Atlanta schools have done the job outlined for them by the court in the Compromise plan of 1973. He calls the suit a “money-making scheme by lawyers.”

Whether the suit is a “money-making scheme” or not, it tries to address issues which were not solved by the Compromise of 1973. In this respect it is trying to promote change for the better and a future for education in the South which is based on innovations in learning rather than placement of bodies.

Marcia Cross-Briscoe is a recent graduate of Emory University, majoring in English and Black Studies. She resides in Atlanta.

EDUCATION

By Staff

Vol. 1, No. 5, 1979, pp. 21-22

Cool is the word for discipline alternatives in the High Point, North Carolina public schools. As an acronym, Cool means character oriented optional learning. As a project for junior high school students, it includes alternative learning centers, diagnostic-prescriptive teaching, student rights and responsibilities and parent education.

Funded by Title IV-C of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Project Cool operates an alternative learning center (ALC) in three junior high schools. The centers are for students who have difficulty adjusting to the normal junior high school programs. In most cases the difficulty comes to light through some form of disruptive behavior which would ordinarily lead to suspension or expulsion.

Centers are located in unused space somewhere in each junior high school and each is equipped with a wealth of materials, both commercially prepared and teacher made, designed specifically for working with the type of student assigned to the center. Each ALC can accommodate up to 15 students at a time. A staff of one professional and one aid works in each center. This staff also assists in planning and operating inservice training for teachers and parent education sessions.

Volume One, Number One of the project’s newsletter, Keepin’ Cool, described in some detail how the students are assigned to the center, what happens, in general, while they are there and how they get out. From that issue:

“The referral process is initiated with a disruptive behavioral problem recognized either by a teacher, guidance counselor, or a member of the administrative staffs of the junior high schools. The teacher conveys the necessary referral information to the Administrative Assistant who, in turn, conveys this information to the Principal of Administration. This Principal, after reviewing pertinent data is responsible for calling and chairing a staffing to give the behavioral problem due consideration.

The representation of the staffing is at the discretion of the principal. However, usually the composition of the staffing will reflect some or all of the following personnel: The ALC teacher, the student’s teachers, the home/school coordinator, the school psychologist, and the guidance counselor.

After a thorough review of the problem, the committee or staff can offer a number of recommendations including: counseling by the psychologist/guidance counselor, home visits by the home/school coordinator, utilization of outside agencies, referral back to the classroom for a cooling-off period with periodic contacts by the principal of instruction or the principal of administration, suspension, or referral to the ALC for a time limit deemed appropriate by the ALC teachers.

Once a decision has been made to refer the student to the ALC, the home/school coordinator is contacted to deliver in person a form indicating to parents that the student will be temporarily reassigned to the ALC. Another form notifies a student’s teachers that he/she will be reporting to the ALC, and requests assignments and materials.

Within the ALC, the student will have an orientation period to further explain the center, his/her role, and the teacher’s role. This orientation period will also include directed work periods alternating with a number of informal diagnostic tools such as reinforcement, anger, interest, and values inventories. As the student completes assignments within the ALC the teacher will attempt to find the antecedents of the problems, and help the student to become aware of the consequences of his/her behavior. Value clarification will be used as an alternative strategy within the center. If the ALC teacher observes the student experiencing difficulty with assignments, informal academic inventories (informal spelling and math placement tests) will be employed in an attempt to discover if the academic and behavioral difficulties are related.

While in the ALC, the student will use a Behavioral Contract and will be evaluated daily. Also, he/she will

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negotiate a contract of conditions for re-entry to the classroom. The ALC will gradually be phased-out as the student fulfills the contract conditions. Before formal reentry, appropriate teachers will be notified by the ALC teacher. It is hoped that the ALC teacher and the classroom teacher will develop a close working relationship so that diagnostic information and instructional techniques can be shared. Another staffing (re-entry) could be used to facilitate this informationsharing. This sharing will facilitate a smooth transition into the classroom.”

A student’s behavior will be periodically reviewed by the ALC staff and the classroom teacher in an effort to prevent return to the ALC.

Two years ago when Project Cool began, a student was referred to one of the ALC’s. The reasons for this referral were numerous. His teachers indicated that he was simply unable to function in a normal classroom situation, possibly because of emotional problems and a negative selfimage. They reported his behavior as being very disruptive-habitual tardies and cuts, smoking, hitting others and making noises, etc.

This student expressed a personal desire for help and requested that he be placed in the ALC. After entering the center, he seemed to thrive on personal attention and soon learned that he would receive extra praise and attention when it was so deserved. His behavior and work habits showed constant improvement. Much progress occurred as the student received individual help and instruction. Time was spent on remedial work in math and reading before advancing to regular classroom assignments.

A close relationship developed between this student and the ALC staff. Because of his interest in the guitar, the ALC aid volunteered to give him private lessons one afternoon a week.

After several weeks, the student began gradually returning to his regular class schedule. According to the ALC teacher, “His progress was gratifying. His teachers say he has done a complete turnabout and is like a different person. He is now described as being a delightful, polite, conscientious student. This is truly a success story that warms the heart and makes me say I am doing something worthwhile.”

Those who enter are finding help in the ALC. During the 1977-78 year, Project Cool worked intensively with approximately 100 students. The total involvement of the superintendent, the associate superintendent, the director of the project and the principal of the three schools in which the ALC’s are located is phenomenal, accounting in large part for the success of the project. Great things seem to be taking place in helping the junior high students who are potential dropouts turn themselves around and feel better about themselves. A strong component of the program is the close cooperation with school and community agencies including guidance counselors, school psychologists, the police and a group called Youth for Christ. The centers provide excellent dissemination of information which keep students, teachers and parents informed about the ALC.

The presence of Project Cool has helped decrease truancies, suspensions, expulsions, acts of physical violence and discipline referrals.

For more information contact: John Smith, Director Project Cool High Point Public Schools PO Box 789 High Point, N.C. 27261 (919) 885-5161

Reprinted courtesy of Creative Discipline, Vol. 1, No. 9, published by the American Friends Service Committee Southeastern Public Education Program.

EDUCATION: The Issue of Desegregation

By Diane Johnston

Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, pp. 25

During a lively discussion on education at SRC’s recent Annual Meeting, panelist Jean Fairfax, director of education programs for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, remarked, “There is a lot more to the Brown case than school desegregation. It got us off the back of the bus into Colony Square.”

Fairfax’s comment characterizes the main issues addressed at the session, which began with Assistant Attorney General Drew 5. Days III outlining the complexities of the desegregation issues as he sees them from the Justice Department.

Days pointed out that desegregation goes beyond simply joining Black and White children in the classroom, and includes fair employment practices so that the faculty, as well as the student body, is integrated. Desegregation also covers discrimination by sex, and against the handicapped. He explained that too little has been done by the Justice Department and HEW in terms of coordinating their activities. As a result, Days said, there are currently about 250 discrimination cases pending, many without attorneys.

Director of the Southeast public education program for the American Friends Service Committee, Winifred Green, spoke next of the unfinished business of the last three decades. “The breakthroughs of 1964 and ’65 were clear-cut,” she said, “but today, equity is more complex,” She pointed out that migrants, bilingual students, the handicapped, school drop-outs and female students must be considered when dealing with educational equity.

Green warned against unfair but subtle practices that can keep disadvantaged students back. She cited the practice of “sidetracking” children who are labelled “not ready” for the first grade. These children are often lumped into a special class and kept from advancement in regular grades.

Attacking political and educational leaders who set policy, Green said there is too much educational rhetoric and not enough action. She further criticized lethargic law enforcement agencies. She called individuals and groups like the Southern Regional Council to investigate problems and to demand continued action.

“Don’t turn your backs on these issues,” Green cautioned, “just because they are hard to understand, less visible than they were in the sixties, or because they’re hard to work with. We must all work for changes.”

Jean Fairfax concluded the formal presentation by addressing the issues of higher education. “Initially,” she began, “it was a major victory to achieve individual access for highly motivated Black students into higher education. Today, that is inadequate. Now we have to work on including Blacks as a group into the whole system.”

Fairfax showed the successes and failures of desegregation in higher education. For example, the numbers of full-time Black undergraduates in post-secondary education are increasing, as are the percentages of Blacks enrolled in predominantly White institutions. Also up are the numbers of 20-34-year-old Blacks enrolled as fulltime students.

Fairfax emphasized, however, that these gains may be unstable. She cited a decrease in Black enrollments in Virginia, questioning the possible ill effects of the minimum competency exams offered there. She also found discouraging figures in the distribution of Black students in the total school system. In some states, she pointed out, nearly half of the Black students enroll in only 2-year institutions and community colleges. The numbers of Blacks at so-called “flagship” institutions (large state universities, such as the University of Georgia at Athens), are not substantially increased. “We have to eliminate the disparities,” she said.

Fairfax questioned the adequacy of remedial programs, financial aid, and the effects of attitudes towards minorities. She also expressed concern over disproportionately low enrollment and graduation of minorities in certain key fields such as engineering, the sciences (including medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine), and law.

Fairfax argued, too, that universities and colleges, just as any large corporations, should be required to honor equal opportunity and fair employment laws. Black faculty members are not being hired at flagship institutions nor the smaller community colleges. For example, she said, except for a junior college in Atlanta, there are no Black presidents at predominantly White institutions in the South.

According to the NAACP leader, there is a need for a new perspective on an old problem: the role of the traditional Black institution in integration. Currently, HEW guidelines are supposed to encourage and enhance these schools with financial support; HEW certainly advises against closing or downgrading them. Fairfax, however, points out that in order to maintain and/or upgrade Black colleges, money has to be taken from funds designated for the mostlyWhite flagship institutions. She is concerned that we cannot have both since HEW appears unwilling to go that far.

During a question-and-answer period, the panelists entertained inquiries from the audience. Professor Bell Wiley of Emory University who moderated concluded the session.

Diane Johnston, a senior at Emory, recently completed an internship in the publications department at Southern Regional Council.

Interchange: In This Issue

By Betty Norwood Chaney

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, p. 2

May 17, markes the 25th anniversary of Brown v. Borad of Education decision by the Supreme Court. While not devoting the contents of this issue entirely to eductation, Southern Changes, like so many other publications this month, reserves some space for reflecting upon the state of deucation 25 years after the historic decision.

In “Soapbox” this month, Dillard professor Monte Piliawsky appraises the South to measure how much progress has been made since 1954. He finds the paradox of the “New South” to be most dramatically exhibited in the area of public education. “School integration,” he says, “has generally meant that White parents have pulled their children outof the public schools, leaving to Black (and some poor White) children school systems which invariably are underfunded. The remaining White chldren often are divided from Blacks by controversial tracking systems.”

Although the picture he paints is rather dismal, he nevertheless concludes that public education is still the “best hope for the ‘New South’ to provide an enlightened citizenry and to creat national unity. (The commentary carried here is part of the the introduction to a much larger unpublished work by Piliawsky entitled Exit 13 about the closed socielty at the University of Southern Mississippi.)

“Profiles in Change” from John Egerton’s School Desegregation: A Report Card from the South looks at schools around the Southland after desegregation. Together theseprofiles present a very descriptive picture– one not greatly changed since 1975- of integration in Southern public schools.

Some schools have had more success with desegregation than others. There are those like Lillian M. Brinkley in Norfolk who feels “all of us someday– we may bein our graves– will realize it has been for the benefit of everybody.” But then there are others like Rev. Joseph N. Green, also of Norfolk who says, “We’ve desegregated the schools, but I do not feel we’ve integrated the schools… integration means people are working together harmoniously and cooperatively. I don’t think this has really come about. That which separated us in the past to a great extent is still present.”

In some instances standardized test scores, a requisite for measuring progress, indicate a drop for all races since desegregation. Now another fator entering the picture is minimum competency testing, a practice that is inforce in practically every Southern state, and has probably become the hottest and most controvercial issue over the last year. Many feel that the tests, a basis for awarding high school diplomas, will disproportionately affect the poor and minorities.

In this issue, Alace Lovelace reports on yet another situation involving testing that is causing considerable controversy. It is the Georgia desegregation plan for higher education which calls, among a number of other things, for entrance and exit tests to be administered to college students. Many students and some faculty see this plan as a ploy for decreasin the number of Black students who are able to enter and graduate from college. Demonstrations and violence have erupted around this plan while others find it “totally acceptable.”

Two other controversial issues involving schools are also repoted on in this issue. They are the prayer in public schools debate, by Steve Suitts, in our Southern Politics department and the school breakfast program, by Judy Curie, in the Health Care department.

In addition, we also carry in this issue “The Triana Fish Story” by Thomas Noland about the small, poor Alabama community whose residents were found to have extraordinary levels of DDT in their bodies.

Wayne Greenhaw reports on another situation in Alabama involving the poor. It is about their legal struggle with the Alabama Power Company who is seeking the largest rate increase in the state’s history.

The appointment of G. Duke Beasley as the first administrator of the Georgia Office of Fair Employment Practices caused something of a stur last summer (See the September issue of Southern Changes, Vol. 1 No. 1), but nothing compared to the uproar created by the release of his first annual report recently. Ginny Looney brings us up-to-date on the administrator’s appointment and the report called a “complete and utter wste of taxpayer’s money” by one legislator.

As we enter the second quarter after the Brown decision, it is clear from the levels of debate surrounding education on all fronts that we are probably still another quarter of a century away from solving them. This is not to say that some progress has not been made. “Profiles in Change” attest to that fact, but the burden placed upon education in this country is a heavy one– one we’ve only begun to bear.

Profiles in Change

By John Egerton

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, pp. 8-10, 26-28

(Editorial Note: This excerpt is taken from John Egerton’s School Desegregation: A Report Card from the South, published by Southern Regional Council in 1976. It provides a good overview of school desegregation in the South. The briefer city profiles which make up this section were authored by working newspersons who have written about the school desegregation process for their newspapers. Their by-lines follow their reports. The complete study is available from the Council at $4.00 a copy.)

Anniston, Alabama: Wounds To Heal

After eight years of backing away from desegregation and two years of living with it, Anniston school officials say they’re now getting back to their basic work: educating children.

Desegregation, when it finally came, was tense at first-but peaceful. Now the tension is gone, and educators seem to take pride in the way things have worked. “1 think people in Boston would gladly give their interest in hell to trade places with us,” says Anniston High School Principal Robert Whitehead.

The Reverend N.Q. Reynolds, a Black minister and civil rights leader who now serves as chairman of the Anniston Board of Education, says, “Once they decided it was something they would have to do, everyone buckled down and started working, and worked beautifully together.”

Anniston, with a population of 31,000 (34 percent Black), is located in Northeast Alabama, 60 miles from Birmingham. The city is surrounded by semi-rural Calhoun County, which has a population of more than 100,000, about 10 percent Black.

The city maintained a dual school system until the mid1960s. As a result of HEW enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, some “freedom of choice” desegegation began in 1965. In 1967, Anniston became one of the 99 Alabama school systems involved in Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, a statewide suit. Three years later, after many alternatives were proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the school system and the Black community, a plan to disestablish the dual schools was ordered into effect.

The Justice Department was not happy with the plan, because it left most of the schools either predominantly White or overwhelmingly Black. School officials, though, expressed public satisfaction. Superintendent John L. Fulmer told newspaper reporters he felt racial problems, as far as the schools were concerned, were “almost passe.” At the time, however, formerly allWhite Anniston High School was still about 80 percent White, and formerly all-Black Cobb High had 1,120 Blacks and only 13 Whites.

Further court action and out-of-court negotiation led in 1973 to yet another plan-the one that is now in force.

Under the plan, five of the 11 elementary schools (three of them originally for Whites) were closed, and Johnston Junior High School was converted to an elementary school to accommodate most of the students from the five closed schools. Anniston and Cobb high schools were paired, with senior high students going to Anniston. At Cobb, an older school located in a Black residential area, a special effort was made to strengthen the curriculum in mathematics, languages and the sciences.

The plan left several elementary schools racially identifiable. As a result, the Justice Department has kept the court case open, and has required changes in the plan from year to year. Two of the elementary schools were paired last fall. To others are still segregated. One is all

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White, and sits on the opposite side of a range of hills from the rest of the system; the other is nearly all Black, and is almost equally as isolated. The school system is under orders to look for a way to desegregate the two schools, but no specific plan has yet been suggested. Fulmer, the superintendent, says that, in view of present trends in the courts, he doesn’t believe anything will be done.

Rev. Reynolds, the board chairman, says he wishes the Justice Department would back off a little and let the school system have time to plan for the future. “Every year since 1967,” he says, “we have been monitored and required to make some additional changes in the desegregation pattern. That in itself is a hardship.”

Nonetheless, Reynolds sees nothing but progress ahead for the school system. He believes that integration has ceased to be a problem: “As we get some of the wounds healed-and they do heal more and more with time-and get some of the hangups out of our minds, we’ll have nothing but progress.”

A group of Anniston High juniors and seniors, in a discussion of the pros and cons of desegregation, concluded that it has been mostly beneficial to them. No tension remains, they said, although they are aware at times of a “them” and “us” attitude in themselves, and of what might be called-with some irony- de facto segregation. The school’s basketball team, for example, is all-Black; White youngsters who like basketball play at the YMCA.

At the elementary level, things are somewhat different. Mauvelene Phillips, the principal at Johnston Elementary, says children in the school are working well together: “We have seen improvement in the situation. Each group tends to accept the other more freely than they once did. They cooperate together.”

Today, in addition to having its first Black school board chairman, the system has a Black assistant superintendent and a Black principal at Cobb, as well as at two of the elementary schools. According to school officials, the faculty in the system-and in each school-is approximately two-thirds White and one-third Black.

The population of Anniston, while falling in recent years, has remained a steady two-thirds White. But the student body in the schools has gradually become more Black. Between 1961 and 1967, Black enrollment increased by about 600, while White enrollment fell by 800. Since 1967, both Black and White enrollment has fallenthe former by almost 500, the latter by almost 2,000. Over the entire period since 1961, total enrollment has dropped from 8,000 to 5,400, and the schools have shifted from 65 percent White to 55 percent Black.

Private and parochial schools in Anniston have absorbed some of the Whites who left the city’s schools, but Superintendent Fulmer believes most of the loss has been to surrounding Calhoun County, which has more than 11,000 students, less than 10 percent of whom are Black. Fulmer expresses some concern that continued White flight will lead to a “tipping” situation in which the system could become almost all-Black. Reynolds believes factors other than White flight are involved.

“It has become a whipping stone for the system,” he says. “I think a majority of them would have gone anyway, though, even without desegregation. It was a contributing factor, but not a major one.”

Reynolds believes the city of Anniston could help mat.ters by annexing parts of the county. Another possible move-merger of the city and county schools-has been discussed publicly on occasion, but no such change is now in prospect.

The school principals say there has been no increase in discipline problems attributable to desegregation. At Anniston High, Robert Whitehead says discipline there is related to social factors divorced from desegregation.

The system has added some remedial classes to the curriculum in recent years, particularly in reading and mathematics. Even so, many children-particularly Black children-did not do well in the first states of desegregation, according to Fulmer. He believes overall performance has improved since then, however, and he says younger students whose entire school experience has been in a desegregated setting are doing well, though “maybe not as well as they should.”

Standardized test scores have been dropping since 1969 in both city and county schools- a fact that cannot be explained by desegregation, since the county schools are overwhelmingly White. Fulmer says he has no racial breakdown of test scores to indicate how students have fared since desegregation and some school officials believe it is too early to make comparisons.

Fulmer says he gets few calls these days from parents concerned with desegregation-related problems. In coming months, however, one potential controversy does face the school system. It has to do with the need to replace Cobb Junior High with a modern facility. The school board owns ample land in a White residential area adjacent to Anniston High, and there is some sentiment for building there. Many Blacks are opposed to that; they say Whites always want to move important institutions out of the Black community. Some Whites also are opposed, on the ground that they don’t want so many children in their area of town. A satisfactory solution remains to be worked out.

-Judy Johnson

Anniston Star

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Austin, Texas: Waiting For The Court

Desegregation in Austin lurched to a rocky beginning in 1971 when the city’s all-Black junior and senior high schools were closed and their students were bused to allWhite schools across town.

The desegregation plan, approved in federal district court, did not affect the city’s elementary schools, or its sizable Mexican-American population, nor did it require Whites to be bused. Legal arguments on those and other questions were taken to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The case has been resting there for nearly three years.

The initial change was accompanied by jeers, rockthrowing and boycotts. Now, things are quieter. The opening of schools last fall was uneventful, and a general calm prevails, marred only by occasional flare-ups between small gangs of Blacks and Whites at the district’s two or three most overcrowded schools.

“We have moved from the stage where our principal concerns were dealing with physical confrontation,” says Superintendent Jack L. Davidson. “Now there is greater concentration on the academic and extracurricular participation of all students in all phases of the school program.

Among the problems left to ponder are the high rate of dropouts and pushouts among minorities, the sparse sprinkling of minorities in extra-curricular activities, and low achievement test scores among all three racial groups.

Austin is a city of 300,000 people. Its school system enrolls 59,000 students-an increase of 4,000 since desegregation began-and the racial ratios have changed only slightly in recent years. Whites make up 63 percent of the total (a decrease of 2 percent since 1970), MexicanAmericans are 22 percent (an increase of 2 percent), and Blacks comprise 15 percent. White flight and private schools have had no significant effect on public school enrollment.

About 15,000 Austin students are bused to school, including some Black and Chicano students who participate in a minority-to-majority transfer program. Only 2,200 students are bused as part of the desegregation plan, and almost all of them are Black. At the elementary level there are five all-Black schools, and about a third of the 60 elementary schools either have a relative handful of Whites (5 percent or less) or a preponderance of them (95 percent or more).

At the secondary level, Blacks make up between 9 and 30 percent of the enrollment in formerly all-White schools. Most of the Mexican-American junior and senior high school students are concentrated in East Austin schools.

There is a high attrition rate among both Blacks and Chicanos, evidenced by two sets of figures. First, Mexican-Americans make up 25 percent of the elementary school enrollment, but only 17 percent of the high school student total. And second, Black students received 54 percent of the long-term suspensions last year. In short, there is a dropout problem among Chicanos and a pushout problem facing Blacks.

Student participation in extracurricular activities is another problem in the schools. Such programs as band, pep squad, student council and honor society attract plenty of Whites, but disproportionately small numbers of minority students.

Scores from standardized achievement tests indicate a slight drop by all three racial groups in the past three years. School officials see no connection between desegregation and test performance. Schools with high percentages of minority students tend to be clustered at the bottom of the achievement score rankings. Average scores from the predominantly White schools are higher, but still below the national average.

The percentage of Black and Mexican-American teachers in the system has inched upward since desegregation began, but the current totals do not please either group. Blacks comprise 14 percent of the total professional staff, and Chicanos only 7 percent; at the classroom level, the percentages are slightly higher. Representatives of both minority groups have accused the school district of discrimination in hiring; school officials say there is a lack of qualified applicants, and recruiting efforts have not been highly successful. In the top echelons of the school district administration, there is

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one Black and one Mexican-American among the five assistant superintendents, and one Black and two MexicanAmericans among 19 department directors.

The decrease in confrontations and racial incidents in the secondary schools, says Superintendent Davidson, is a result of two things: “People having the opportunity to adjust to the new situation, and new services provided by the district as a result of desegregation.” Tnethnic student human relations committees operate in each secondary school, coordinating activities designed to foster positive attitudes toward desegregation. There is also a schoolcommunity liaison program staffed by a tn-ethnic team of 10 persons who work to improve relations among the ethnic groups throughout the district. Several other programs, financed largely by federal funds, are focused on reading and mathematics problems, communication skills, extra-curricular activity participation, attendance problems and special learning problems of bilingual and migrant students.

“There seems to be a greater awareness on the part of most of our population of the desirability and the necessity to make desegregation work to everybody’s advantage,” Davidson says. He adds that although desegregation “hasn’t materially enhanced or hurt the cognitive achievement of Austin students, it has made school a more realistic representation of what the community is and should be.”

Still, it is generally acknowledged that only partial school desegregation has taken place in Austin, and school officials have been inclined to wait for directives from the courts, rather than to take the initiative on the issue. Bertha Means, a supervisor in the secondary schools and a respected civic leader in the Black community, believes the various programs and services the schools have started in recent years have promoted desegregation, but she thinks more needs to be done. So does M.G. Bowden the Anglo director of elementary education, who says “more integration needs to take place.”

The Rev. Marvin Griffin, the only Black on the seven-member board of school trustees, says Austin “has not fulfilled the mandate of the Supreme Court because we haven’t touched the elementary schools.” Gus Garcia, the only Mexican-American member of the board, also criticizes the current desegregation plan, saying it excludes grades on through five and requires one-way busing. Garcia would like to see the schools which have reached at least a 25 percent minority enrollment without busing be designated as integrated schools.

In New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has been stymied for more than three years by the Austin case. Part of the conflict there concerns the legal status of Mexican-Americans, who have not been subjected to the statutory segregation as Blacks have.

Lynne Flocke

Austin American-Statesman

Bogalusa, Louisiana: Still Uncomfortable

Gradually since the mid-1960s, desegregated schools in Bogalusa have become an acceptable, if not robust, social institution. It is debatable whether they were ever destined to be anything more than a federally-enforced anomaly, bringing together the rough-edged Whites and Blacks of this milltown community in an uncomfortable atmosphere.

Bogalusa, on the toe of Louisiana’s boot-like configuration, touches the piney woods and sand loam of southern Mississippi. There is a hardtack mentality indigenous to the land, a kind of raw frontier atmosphere in which unskilled Whites have long battled with Blacks for livelihood in the same kinds of jobs. For the past two and a half decades, the town has been dominated by one industrial citizen, Crown Zellerbacn, which converts pine trees into Bogalusa brown kraft paper and the paper into grocery bags and corrugated boxes.

Initially, a court-ordered plan of “freedom of choice” desegregation came to Bogalusa in the fall of 1965. Fighting broke out between Whites and the dozen or so Blacks who transferred into the previously all-White schools. Several of the more militant White students were put under injunction by the federal court for harassing the Blacks, and for some the injunction was in force until they graduated.

Total desegregation of the city’s schools, based on a plan submitted by the all-White school board, was finally ordered by the federal court in the fall of 1969. Of the 5,157 students in the system that fall, 38 percent were Black. Enrollment has fallen by a total of about 500 since then, but the Black ratio has also fallen-by one percentage point.

School Superintendent Frank Mobley says the loss of students is not a result of desegregation or of White flight to private schools, but of a general decline in population involving Blacks as much as Whites. Private schools have not been a factor; American Academy, and all-White school, had a graduating class of 16 last year.

Mobley maintains that since he became superintendent in 1971, the desegregation plan has been fully implemented. “There are no more all-White or all-Black schools,” he says. “The percentages of Blacks range from 20 to 30 percent in some schools to as much as 45 percent in others.”

Under the initial plan, two relatively new all-Black schools in Black neighborhoods were closed. “The Black community went along with the idea of not having any totally Black schools,” says Andrew Moses, a Black radio station manager, “but we didn’t like having to lose the schools in the Black neighborhoods.”

Among more militant Blacks, there are some bitter critics of what Mobley calls “full integration.” Gayle Jenkins, a Black mother and secretary of the Bogalusa

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Voters League, is one. “We are supposed to be integrated,” she says, “but it is integrated on the outside and segregated on the inside. From an educational standpoint, we feel we have some of the best teachers among Blacks, but they are limited. There are, for instance, no Black males teaching in the elementary schools, and it was not until this past year that we had a Black named principal of an elementary school.”

Jenkins contends that there are discriminatory hiring practices affecting teachers and administrative personnel. “They are hiring Whites,” she says, “but they find some excuse-such as they can’t find Black specialists-not to hire Blacks.”

Mobley defends the hiring practices in the system. “We have three Black assistant principals, as well as one Black elementary principal,” he says. “We don’t have any Blacks in supervisory positions at this time because we were overstaffed and we’re not hiring any people.”

A.Z. Young, a long-time Black activist in Bogalusa, expresses views similar to those voiced by Jenkins. “We have physical integration,” he declares, “but not mental integration. I’m afraid that is still a long way off.”

Young says a pattern is developing in the school system: “When a Black is in charge of any activity, such as track coach, the Whites don’t participate.” Furthermore, he says, too many young Blacks who graduate from the schools “wind up in the ghettos up North, or on skid row, or have to go into service. We aren’t getting as many to go to college now as we did when we had Black schools.”

Young worries about Bogalusa being “boxed in,” culturally and economically: “We have no interstate highway, no airlines, no trains, and only two buses a day. The people who generally come here can’t make it anywhere else in the world.” From a Black standpoint, Crown Zellerbach has been a good employer and a positive force for racial justice-but it is gradually cutting back on employment.

Still, there is some optimism about the future of the school system. Two years ago, the voters passed a $4.5 million school bond issue to finance modernization and construction of school facilities. Superintendent Mobley says it is significant “that we had one of the few school bond issues to pass anywhere around this area in the past few years.”

Mobley also asserts that the school system does not have “any real discipline problems now,” as it has had in the past. “We have our share, but I don’t think it is much different than schools all over the nation. This year, we feel we are having our best year. Each year has gotten a little better.”

Shortly before last Christmas, there was an incident in which a White boy stabbed a Black boy. In the disturbance which followed, only a small number of students became involved. The federal judge in whose court the Bogalusa school desegregation case has been handled was brought into the controversy to assure fairness in the settling of the incident by school officials. Most observers appeared not to see the affair as being racially oriented.

Blacks are still concerned that they have no representation on the elected school hoard, even though they have offered capable candidates in the past two elections. “The feeling was that it was time for a Black to be on the school board,” says Al Hansen managing editor of the Bogalusa Dailr’ News.” But when Whites got to the polls, they just couldn’t do it.”

Moses, the Black radio station manager, got a very respectable vote last time, as did Murkel Sibley, a Black executive at Crown Zellerbach. But a majority of the registered voters are White, and Blacks see that as an insurmountable obstacle as long as school board members are elected at large. A lawsuit is now on file in federal court to require that single-member districts be created for each of the five board posts.

Inside the schools, the two problem areas academically are reading and mathematics. Some classes are almost all Black or all-White. In extra-curricular activities, the chorus is mostly Black, the band is mostly White, and the drama club is well mixed. Last year, a White boy and a Black girl had the leading roles in the school play. Whites and Blacks in the Bogalusa schools are still not entirely comfortable with one another, but the worst hostilities and inequalities of the past appear to have been reduced.

W.F. Minor

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Norfolk, Virginia: “For The Benefit of Everybody”

When U.S. District Court Judge John A. MacKenzie declared on February 14, 1974, that the Norfolk school system was unitary and that “racial discrimination through official action has been eliminated,” he shut the book on one of the longest school desegregation cases in the country.

For almost 19 years, the Norfolk School Board had been involved in litigation initiated by 101 Black parents and children who wanted an end to “separate but equal” education. The 1956 case bore the name of Leola Pearl Beckett, a Black seventh-grader who grew up without ever attending an undesegregated school.

Step by step over two decades, successive court orders forced the school board to desegregate its schools, to take positive steps to desegregate classrooms and faculties, to bus as a means of ending racial imbalance, to provide free transportation, and finally to pay legal fees to attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case.

In retrospect, many persons closely associated with the

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Norfolk public schools say desegregation has gone fairly smoothly.

“It was unusually smooth when you compare it to other cities of our size and racial makeup,” says John C. McLaulin, the assistant superintendent for research and planning. “Comparatively speaking, there were very few instances of violence and I can’t remember any community-instigated incidents.”

But the road the schools traveled between 1956 and 1974 was rocky at several points along the way. In September 1958, for instance, Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., used the state’s “massive resistance” laws to close six all-White junior and senior high schools and lock out 10,000 Norfolk students rather than allow 17 Blacks to enter the schools. After a federal judge ruled the anti-desegregation laws unconstitutional, the schools quietly desegregated in February of 1959, but half the members of the “Lost Class of ’59” never finished their senior year.

Another sharp turn of events came in 1970 when the school system-again under court orderbegan busing students in an effort to increase desegregation. Vocal but nonviolent civic groups protested and threatened to boycott the opening of school. In the 15 months that followed, the school system lost 7,000-almost one-fourthof its White students.

In the first year of busing for desegregation purposes, approximately 11,000 students were transported. Now, the total is about 24,000, with the increase being made necessary by changes in the desegregation plan.

The decline in public school enrollment which followed the initiation of cross-town busing was accompanied by a sharp enrollment increase in the area’s private schools, many of which sprang up as a direct result of desegregation. At the peak, an estimated 12,000 Norfolk children were attending the more than 50 private and parochial schools in Norfolk and the nearby cities of Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Chesapeake, and the overwhelming majority of them were middle-class Whites.

But flight, sudden and severe when it began in the early 1970s, has now tapered off. In the fall of 1973, school officials reported the return of 850 students from private and parochial schools, and the following year, another 1,000 reportedly returned. No accounting of returning students waskept in 1975, but a school spokesman expressed the belief that enrollment is no longer seriously affected by White flight.

In the past 10 years, Norfolk’s public school population has declined from about 55,500 in 1965 to 54,700 in 1970 and to 47,400 in 1975. At the same time, the percentage of Black students has increased-but not to the 70 or 75 percent level some predicted as a result of total desegregation. Black percentages went from about 40 in 1965 to 45 in 1970, and to 52 last fall. Between 1974 and 1975, the number and percentage of both Blacks and Whites in the schools remained more or less unchanged. Between 40 and 45 percent of Norfolk’s 300,000 citizens are Black.

This year, Black-White ratios in the five senior high schools, 10 junior highs and 49 elementary schools are reasonably close to the 52-48 ratio for the system as a whole. Black percentages range from 22 to 69 in a few individual schools, but most are near the 50-60 mark. Some teachers, administrators and board members say, however, that the racial ratios don’t tell the whole story.

“We’ve desegregated the schools,” says the Rev. Joseph N. Green, Jr., one of two Blacks on the sevenmember school board, “but I do not feel we’ve integrated the schools. I think we’ve done a good job through busing of putting the races together physically. But integration means people are working together harmoniously and cooperatively. I don’t think this has really come about. That which separated us in the past to a great extent is still present.”

At the elementary level, children appear to work and play together without racial self-consciousness, but at the secondary level, social segregation is more apparent. “They sit in their little group and we sit in ours,” shrugged one high school student. “Integration, it doesn’t mean anything.” Some say this self-segregation simply mirrors a society in which racial divisions remain deep. The distinctly racial character of most neighborhoods in and around Norfolk would seem to support that view.

In the desegregation process, most of the formerly allBlack schools have survived, and most of the Black principals have retained their positions-contrary to what has happened in many other parts of Virginia. In 1974-75, 26 of the city’s 67 principals were Black-roughly the same as before desegregation. Only about one-third of the more than 900 secondary-school teachers were Black, however, and in the central administrative offices of the system, Blacks held only three of the top IS or so posi tions, including one of the five assistant superintendent posts.

Blacks and Whites both are concerned about the disproportionate involvement of Black students in school disciplinary matters. Almost 80 percent of the students who were suspended and subject to expulsion in 1971-72 were Black, and in the years since then, that pattern has remained essentially unchanged. There are no simple explanations for those statistics, and no quick remedy to the problem appears likely.

Busing has been seen as the source of several problems in the schools. Some parents worry about kindergarten and primary students who are bused as much as eight miles across town. Some students say school spirit has been weakened because most of those who ride buses can’t stay after school or come back at night for extracurricular activities. Busing is also said to be responsible for the decline of parental involvement in school activities and in parent-teacher associations.

In spite of the nagging problems, though, most of those who watch the schools closely appear to believe the advantages of desegregation outweigh the disadvantages.

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They say children can now learn about each other and from each other, that all children now have equal access to materials, facilities and educational opportunities, and that all have benefitted from a strengthening of school programs to accommodate a diverse student population.

There is also evidence of academic improvement. Assistant superintendent Robert M. Forster, in comparing standardized achievement test scores from 1971 and 1973, noted an increase in the average reading score of Black students (from 74.4 to 81.9, on a national norm of 100) and also of White students (from 92.3 to 96.7).

Vincent J. Thomas, who was chairman of Norfolk’s school board during much of the litigation and now is chairman of the State Board of Education, credits Norfolk and other public school systems with having “far outdistanced any other public or private institution in creating and maintaining a truly integrated environment.”

Lillian M. Brinkley, a Norfolk elementary school principal, acknowledges that the process has been painful at times, and that it isn’t finished. But she adds: “I think all of us someday-we may be n our graves-will realize it has been for the benefit of everybody.”

Kay McGraw

Norfolk Ledger-Star

The Georgia Desegregation Plan

By Alice Lovelace

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, pp. 12-13, 28

There is a movement afoot in this country to “curtail the educational expectations” of the masses, according to Howard Dodson, director of the Georgia-based Institute of the Black World. Commenting on the desegregation plan currently being implemented in the Georgia public schools of higher education, he says, “Essentially the plan is to dismantle the Black schools. It is reflective of racism in America. White people never see themselves as the problem. It is always the Blacks who are the problem.”

Also commenting on the plan, a young Savannah State College student involved in protests there against the plan exclaimed, “Georgia is a testing ground. Sooner or later it will be all over the country.” The plan, which calls for entry and exit tests and some merging of the programs at the Black and White schools, has angered many students, college faculty members and concerned citizens alike at historically Black Savannah, Albany and Fort Valley state colleges. The general feeling is that the three predominately Black schools are being burdened with the responsibility for desegregation while the issue of open access to higher education facilities for all citizens is ignored.

It was the historic trend of separate and unequal educational facilities, reinforced by deliberate under financing of public Black colleges that led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to initiate a suit in the first place. In Adams vs. Califano, the Defense Fund charged the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) with a lack of aggression in requiring Southern states to end their mandatory dual system of public higher education.

As a result of this action, the court ruled in 1972 that 10 states were in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In essence Title VI stipulates that no person shall be excluded from participation or subjected to discrimination under any program receiving federal assistance.

The Court thus required Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia to submit desegregation plans to HEW for correction of their violations.

The Georgia plan was accepted by Califano in 1974, but was rejected by Judge John Pratt, acting on a petition from NAACP. The Georgia Board of Regents, a board appointed by the governor and consisting of 13 Whites and two Blacks, revised the plan and resubmitted it to HEW in 1977. After further discussion and changes the plan was found acceptable by HEW and the court.

As a part of the plan, Black colleges have been promised millions of dollars in funds to upgrade their facilities and make them more acceptable to Whites. The cost of financing future construction which is an integral part of the overall success of the Georgia plan, and upgrading the curriculum at the three Black colleges is viewed by some as very uncertain in light of today’s tax shy climate.

The plan was met with violence and protest on the campuses of several Black colleges and locations across the state. At Savannah State students turned over cars, blocked off streets and boycotted classes.

The major controversy at Savannah State centered on a portion of the plan which calls for the swapping of the teacher education programs there for the business administration program at mostly White Armstrong State College. The rationale for this arrangement is that Black students majoring in education will have to attend Armstrong and White students majoring in business will elect to transfer to Savannah State. However, many Blacks feel that the number of small town and rural Black teachers will be severely affected by moving the traditional teachers education program from Savannah State to the hostile environment of Armstrong.

“Califano and President Carter both appear to have been talking out of both sides of their mouths when they said they wanted to preserve historically Black colleges,” one administrator exclaimed. “They said one ‘thing, but

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they are doing another. Teacher education is the history of Black colleges and they are taking that away from Savannah State.”

There are 28 education-related programs at Savannah State, and no one has yet made it clear to teachers just what will happen to them. They are particularly uneasy over the language of the plan which states that, “several key faculty members at Savannah State College will be reassigned or terminated as a result of the plan.”

A continuing education center operated jointly by both colleges is also proposed for some future date. The primary function of the continuing education center would be to offer various allied health programs, programs in criminal justice, courses for the disadvantaged in health, political awareness and living habits, as well as cultural and educational courses to enhance the daily lives of individuals.

In order to correct past negligence and to attract more Whites, the Board has proposed that one million dollars a year for five years (1983) be spent on “improving the campus environment of Savannah State College.”

Requirements for entrance and graduation at Savannah State will be upgraded and it is expected that 95 percent of the entering freshmen will be required to take the basic skills examination. Those students scoring less than a combined score of 750 will be required to attend “special studies” courses for which they must pay but receive no college credit.

Savannah State students contend that the creation of Armstrong State College was illegal in the first place because it was built since the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation. The Georgia Board of Regents upgraded Armstrong from a junior college to a four-year college in 1964, even though Savannah State was located about 15 miles away and offered similar liberal arts programs.

Albany State College and Albany Junior College are very dissimilar institutions, yet the Georgia plan provides for, “merging these two sister institutions and relocation of the senior college campus (Albany State) in the event that enhancement steps at Albany State do not result, within a four-year interval (1982), in the degree of desegregation required.”

Despite the fact that Albany State College is a senior college and draws students from the same general area as Georgia Southwestern, the regents felt there should be no plan requiring the increase of Black enrollment at Georgia Southwestern which had an enrollment in 1976 of 6.2 percent Black students.

The plan requires that Albany State substantially increase its White enrollment or be swallowed by the smaller Albany Junior College. It also calls for the strengthening of key administrative positions through “further personnel training or personnel replacement.”

The creation of a joint Albany State College/Albany Junior College extension and public service program is called for in hopes that it will “enhance the overall reception of Albany State College of all elements of the community.” The function of the extension and public service program is basically the same as the proposed Savannah/Armstrong continuing education center.

In order to increase the attractiveness of Albany State College, new courses will be introduced. Additional programs will be strengthened through the coordination of selected associate degree programs offered by Albany Junior College and related bachelor level programs offered by Albany State.

Admission, progression and graduation standards will be tightened at Albany State. This will result in 96 percent of the entering freshmen being required to take the basic skills examination and is expected to result in an increase in the number of students enrolled in the special studies course.

In an effort to “insure increased selectivity” in the Albany State teacher education program, a two-point five (2.5) college cumulative grade point average will be required for admission and graduation. Completion of the “rising juniors test” or regents test, prior to admission to teacher education will also be required. The same requirements will be instituted for admission and graduation for the nursing program.

As with Albany and Savannah, at predominantly Black Fort Valley State key personnel will be affected and one million dollars a year will be spent over the next five years to enhance the campus. Stricter testing procedures will result in 93 percent of the entering freshmen taking the basic skills exam. The teacher education program will require the same pre-requisites as the Albany plan.

Other institutions in the Georgia system are committed to increase by nearly 16 percent the number of Black high school graduates entering post secondary institutions. Traditionally White institutions will try to increase Black enrollment by eight percent.

Some groups, including the Georgia Conference for Open Education feel that the desegregation plan, along with standardized entry/exit tests, the declining financial aid for low-income students, the concentration of Black students in two-year institutions and the lack of Black faculty members as roll models, might be the straw that breaks the back of Black colleges. As a result of the plan, students at the three affected Black colleges issued a joint declaration calling for: (1) the removal of all standardized tests; (2) open admissions throughout all state schools; (3) credit for special studies programs; (4) 30 percent Black enrollment at the state’s mostly White schools by 1982~ (5) priority for Black colleges; and (6) the hiring and promotion of more Black faculty.

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Modibo Kadalie, political science instructor at Atlanta Junior College and spokesman for Georgia Conference said, “If this plan goes through in Georgia, all other (Black) public land grant colleges in the nation will be threatened.” In March 1979, he called for a boycott of registration at Black schools in opposition to the plan. While the boycott had only minimal effect statewide, j Modibo feels that the rate of registration at Atlanta Junior College was moderately affected.

Octavius O’Neal, organizer of a 450-mile march for justice and equality in Georgia education, expressed the belief that, “The Georgia Board of Regents and the Department of HEW are scheming to make education an elitist thing in Georgia by instituting these standardized entrance and exit examinations. We have an obligation to the Black community to fight these tests. The few gains we made during the sixties are being taken away at an alarming rate. The government is destroying the predominately Black college in the name of ‘quality education.’ ”

The Southern Education Foundation (SEF), while being opposed to standardized tests, feels that it is better for Blacks to use the plan to their advantage than to fight it. Black schools have to be strengthened to survive, a spokesperson for the foundation said. The plan provides some guidelines and directives and has all kinds of possibilities. Why not let some of the historically Black schools be made into major centers, they question. It would be “foolhardy” not to “maximize” the plan to broaden the scope of Black schools, the foundation assessed.

Officials at HEW feel the Georgia plan is “totally acceptable.” Louis Bryson, director of post-secondary education of the HEW regional office in Atlanta, sees no evidence of possible adverse effects in terms of Black student enrollment. Bryson thinks just the opposite will occur with the number of those retained. He said Black faculty will be “upgraded” as a result of the plan.

“The plan offers Black students access equal to that of the White students and (through special studies) assures they will be retained once admitted. The plan attempts to guarantee that the rate of Black graduates will be comparable to the rate of White grads.”

Bryson said a complaint has been filed by a Black student at Fort Valley State College regarding the “rising juniors test.” The Atlanta office investigated the complaint before passing it on to the office in Washington where it is currently under advisement.

“The plan calls for increased Black admission and upgrading of Black faculty. It cannot result in an adverse effect on Black enrollment,” Bryson says. “The regional office will be monitoring its progress and making on-site investigations.”

Still, many remain unconvinced. In a speech at Atlanta University in early March of 1979, Professor Otis S. Johnson, sociology instructor at Savannah State College summed up the disillusionment felt by many when he asserted:

It is my opinion that what has happened in Georgia is a travesty against justice and equality. One of HEW’s guidelines specifically states that the traditionally Black institutions should not bear any undo hardship in the efforts to desegregate the state’s system of higher education. But this is happening in Georgia. The regents are making commitments to HEW to keep the federal funds rolling into Georgia at the same time they are creating barriers to the entrance and exit of Blacks to the university system of Georgia.”

School officials will likely continue to meet throughout the spring and summer trying to determine their best courses of action. Black teachers at Savannah State believe that whatever happens will be to their detriment. Only the future will reveal whether or not their pessimistic attitude prevails for the Black colleges in general.

Alice Lovelace is the writer-in-residence at the Atlanta Neighborhood Arts Center.

Health care: School Breakfast in the South Federal Funds Available Compared With Funds Used Fiscal 1978

By Judy Currie

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, pp. 22-23

Since getting an adequate diet is important in order to perform at maximum potential, the idea that all school children should have the opportunity to eat a well-balanced meal each morning would not seem to be a point of major controversy. The U.S. Congress supported this idea when it enacted legislation to provide school breakfasts at little or no costs to state and local governments. Yet, school hoards in the II Southern states have exhibited such resistance and apathy toward the issue that in 1978 alone, they refused $285 million in federal funds which would have been made available to them if school breakfasts had been provided that year to children who ate subsidized school lunches.

Additional funds are available to “especially needy” schools, roughly defined by the 1978 law as those in which 40 percent or more of the school lunches are served free or at reduced prices. Since in the South over 50 percent of all lunches are either free or at a reduced price, the majority of Southern schools would qualify for the “especially needy” provision and thus be eligible for an additional $65 million. In all, failure to take advantage of this provision means a potential loss of $350 million to Southern states.

While all students who take advantage of school lunches do not take advantage of school breakfasts even when they are offered, the fact that in 1978 almost two-thirds of all Southern schools offering school lunches did not offer school breakfasts only goes to show the vast potential for program expansion.

The program, established in 1966 on a pilot basis, was given permanent status and unlimited funding in 1975. The legislation permits schools to

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serve nutritious breakfasts at minimal costs to their own budgets. The law places no priorities or limitations on the number of schools or children served. It requires only that the school boards apply to the state school food director for the program.

The resistance to the program has been substantial and is usually couched in terms of “practical” problems. One such problem is that the program will “undermine” the family. The fact that only one in five American children today eats an “adequate” breakfast is however, not a result of the school breakfast program but rather a clear indication of the need for such a program. The program in no way prevents parents who wish to serve their children a good breakfast at home from doing so.

Another problem cited in opposition to the school breakfast program is that it is another ”welfare program”-not suitable to the role of an educational system. Since a child’s ability to take full advantage of educational opportunity is dependent in large part on whether the child has an adequate diet, the program is essential to education performance. A South Carolina school food director, put it this way, “I’m not cold-hearted enough to say that you should take your social philosophy out on a kid.”

Participation rates by Southern schools in the school breakfast program is increasing rapidly, however, the resistance is both emotional and disheartening. A recent example of this resistance occurred in Auburn, Alabama, where a newly initiated breakfast program was only costing the school system $50 per month, but the school board cancelled the program after only two months operation. Concerned citizens raised $1,200 to cover any difference between costs and federal funds but there was a serious question about whether the board would accept it. Finally, after a lengthy discussion at a board meeting attended by nearly 30 Auburn residents, the school board decided to accept the money and resume the program.

Although some school boards are more reasonable than Auburn’s, in each, concerned citizens are needed to urge that the school board implement the program. Unfortunately too few Southerners have made this move.

Preparing Women For Engineering Technology

By Steve Hoffius

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 10-13

Katherine Prior is a nurse, a long-time nurse. For 18 years she has worked at hospitals in the Carolinas, returned to classes for more education, and now is a licensed, practical nurse. She has never made more than $4.10 an hour.

She’s tired of it.

Now, on a morning when she is scheduled for night work, she looks a little uncomfortable. She stands in an air conditioning and refrigeration workshop at Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., wearing protective goggles and holding an acetylene torch. Hesitantly, she moves the torch around two joined pieces of copper tubing, turning them a cherry red, and melts silver solder between them. She takes off her goggles and squints to see how she did. A little too much solder, says the instructor, but a good job. She has just soldered her first tube, and puts it aside carefully, beaming with pride. “I want to show my husband,” she says. “He won’t believe it.”

“How much could a woman make if she went into air conditioning work?” someone asks the instructor. “Oh, she’d start out around $4.00 an hour” – Katherine’s eyes widen – “and then after about three years, after she became a full-fledged technician, from $8.00 to $10.00.” Katherine smiles and shakes her head. “Three years?” she asks. “Sounds all right to me.”

Katherine and dozens of other Charleston-area women are members of a new program at Trident, a model for others around the country; FACET/FACIT. The acronym stands for Female Access to Careers in Engineering Technology and in Industrial Technology. Its purpose is to prepare women for high-paying jobs in fields not traditionally open to them.

Pat is also a nurse, making about the same pay as Katherine. She has worked in hospitals for eight years and decided recently to move toward a higher paying job. She visited Trident Tec’s downtown campus to investigate the classes necessary toward earning her RN degree and then her Masters. With that degree she hoped she could find a job teaching in a nursing program. Instead she found out about FACET/FACIT. “With this,” she says, “I don’t have to take six years, I can make more money, and I’ve got a better chance for a sure job.”

Her family doesn’t like it. “My mother keeps telling me, “You’ve got a good job. Why don’t you keep on nursing?’ I tell her ‘It’s my job and it’s my life.’ And then when my brother comes home from the Navy Yard and tells me how much he makes welding, well, I know it’s time for a change.”

According to Trident officials, traditional jobs for women – secretarial, nursing, dental hygienist, teacher – pay salaries that average in the $6,000 – $9,000 range. Many jobs that have been identified as “for men only” in businesses and industries offer salaries that average about $4,000 more. “And the jobs are available,” insists Kay Mathers, acting director of the program. “One of the reasons we started this program was that industries came to us looking for help in meeting affirmative action requirements. They need women, and until now the women simply weren’t available.”

The FACET/FACIT program has two main components. In one part of the program, high school girls are offered eight weeks of daily classes, films, and tours to acquaint them with job possibilities in the surrounding area. They learn about communication skills, the different requirements for various jobs, the problems and benefits of each, and take part in “hands-on” workshops in which they work with small engines, instruments and tools. Once or twice a week, they tour local plants – everything from the town of Hanahan’s water works to the Polaris Missile Facility – and see for themselves what jobs in engineering and engineering technology would entail.

The second part of the program is the section

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in which Katherine and Pat are enrolled. It is directed toward women who are beyond high school age, who hold jobs but feel the need, as Katherine and Pat do, to make a change in their careers. These women gather weekly for a three-hour “Career Exploration Course.” For one hour they hear about a particular job area chemical, mechanical, electronic, architectural, and civil engineering technologies; welding; drafting; and more – usually from a woman already employed in the field. She explains the work, the pay, the other employees and their reactions to women in the field, and she answers questions.

“One of the stock questions,” says Mathers, “is ‘How does your husband feel about your job?’ and ‘How are you treated as a woman there?’ The answers to the first one vary. To the second one it’s usually that at first men test the women a lot, but when they find the women can do the job, they accept them. Other questions deal with how to handle the extra assistance that men often give and how to deal with advancing ahead of qualified men. Because of affirmative action, that’s a real issue now. One woman in the class assumed that the woman in that position wouldn’t take the advancement. It just wasn’t fair, she said. The other woman laughed. ‘You’re damn right I took it,’ she said.

During the remaining two hours of the class, students participate in workshop experiences. In a class on aircraft maintenance, they test metal parts for hairline cracks. In the air conditioning and refrigeration class, where Katherine and Pat took part, they cut copper tubing, widen one end of a piece (“swedge it,” said the instructor), and then solder the two together. The lecture for that session had been uninspiring. None of the students asked questions. No area women could be found who worked in the field, so the class was taught by a male Trident instructor. He said in his seven years at Tec, no woman had ever entered the program. “I’d like to see some women get into air conditioning I refrigeration here,” he said, “if only because it makes a special difference in the classes it’s hard to explain just how – from when it’s all men.” The women rolled their eyes and nodded. They seemed to have an idea of the change their presence would make in an all-male class.

But when they reached the workshop, their eyes widened and mouths dropped open as each tool was used. The cooling unit of a refrigerator had been turned on before the class, and the coils were covered with frost. One by one, the women slowly approached it, and reached out their hands to the coils, withdrawing them quickly, their fingertips covered with snow. “Goll-ee,” one whispered.

The career exploration workshops cover fields in which some of the women are already interested, and others – like air conditioning repair and installation – that few had ever considered. In these, the workshop experiences seem to make the difference, and change a foreign field to an exciting one. When the instructors offered up the acetylene torches, the women raced for them.

These FACET/FACIT programs, though, are really only preparation. A woman who has been through the program will be familiar with engineering and industrial jobs, but will not yet be trained for one. That’s the long-term goal of the program: to supply women with enough information and encouragement that they will take the step that until now has rarely been considered, to enroll in an engineering or industrial program at Tec or another college.

The program’s classes take care of the information. For the encouragement, Mathers and the other staff members have set up extensive opportunities for counseling and support sessions.

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Here they serve both women in both the preparation programs and the engineering technology classes.

“Before classes started last time,” Mathers explains, “I sent out letters to all instructors asking them to let us know when women in their classes seemed to be having a hard time. We get together with them and talk. We have counselors on the staff. We can get them plenty of tutoring assistance. And we have “Nurture Sessions” – we have to change the name, some of the women feel that at their ages they don’t need “nurturing” – in which we get together all the women engineering technology students. We have some programs for them, and some social gatherings. We try to have second year students together with the first year students, as a way of saying ‘Look, I got through it. You can, too.”

Apparently the program is succeeding. In the spring of 1977, just 6% of the students in Tec’s engineering technology classes and 2% of those in industrial technology were women. In the spring 1979 quarter, after one year of the preparation classes, 17% of the engineering technology and 6% of the industrial technology students were women. In those two years the number enrolled in both had increased from 50 to 175. Beyond that, many enrolled in school programs elsewhere. Of 28 senior high school girls in the program last year, 20 enrolled in engineering or engineering technology programs in the fall.

The program’s success is spreading, too. Already similar ones have been established at three other South Carolina Technical colleges: Orangeb urg-Calhoun, Tn-County, and Greenville. Schools in 30 states have requested information, and 46 video copies of the program’s 12minute explanatory film have been mailed out.

FACET/FACIT has been funded for two years now, first by the S.C. State Department of Vocational Education ($61,000) and then under the federal Career Incentive Act ($90,000). The response has been so positive, says Trident Vice President for Development Mary Jolly, that it is about to become a regular part of the Trident offering. “Women,” she explains, “are a major part of the workforce – half the women between 18 and 64 are working. If these women have special needs, if they need special education, then we have a responsibility to take care of that. That’s what a technical college is here for.”

The college also needs the students for more selfish reasons. Shortly before FACET/FACIT was begun, the school was forced to lay off five of its engineering technology instructors because of dropping enrollment. The increase in women had come when the school has needed them most.

Trident, however, needs the students no more than the students need the special training. Both Katherine and Pat admit that they would rather stay in nursing, if they could. But when 18 years experience produces no more than $4.10 an hour, it is inevitable that women will move from the field of nursing – or teaching or secretarial work or other low-paying jobs – into new areas. Thanks to affirmative action, jobs in skilled, high-paying trades are now available to women. And thanks to Trident’s new program, women are receiving the push needed to fill those jobs.

Steve Hoffius is a free-lance writer in Charleston, SC. He is a former intern with SRC’s Southern Voices, and staff member of Southern Exposure

Beaufort Academy–“None Ever Applied”

By George Mcmillan

Vol. 4, No. 6, 1982, pp. 3-4

If Congress wants to know how a typical tax exempt segregated school works in a typical Southern town it should look at Beaufort Academy in this South Carolina Low Country community.

Beaufort Academy is a flourishing place. It’s not in the least like one of those barren campuses plopped down on the rim of some Southern rural community, and presided over by a sweaty, panting, fundamentalist zealot.

Instead it is an attractive place with a country club air about it. It has 125 acres in the midst of pleasant suburbs, six buildings, including a library, gym, a music room, and twenty-four class rooms. It has an annual budget of $750,000, and 475 students in grades one through twelve.

These students would rather been seen dead than without their Izod shirts and Bass Weejuns. And the chairman of its Board of Trustees has been Henry Chambers, the mayor of Beaufort, one of the town’s best-dressed businessmen.

Beaufort Academy has been in the education business continuously since 1966, and it has never had a black student. Or, as its officials insist, “no black student has ever applied to us.” And yet it has complied with present IRS regulations and has tax exempt status. It does not pay any property tax, either. For one period it refused to pay social security taxes for its teachers.

It would seem that Beaufort Academy, having the best of both worlds, being both lily-white in fact and paying no taxes (except sales tax), would be content with its status of relative immunity and that its history as an institution in this town, in its relationships with other institutions, and especially the public schools, would be that of a benign one.

The opposite is true, and Beaufort Academy, and the private school forces which support it, have worked aggressively against public schools, and at one time came close to destroying the public school system here.

The lesson for Congress in Beaufort Academy’s story is that schools like Beaufort Academy enmesh themselves deeply in the social, economic, political and educational life of the town. They claim the allegiance of community leaders just when they are badly needed to help the public schools through the worst crisis in Southern public school history.

The affluent, influential, parents of Beaufort Academy students found themselves under pressure in the past decade to commit themselves to private education as a cause and not simply as an educational option.

In fact, the wounds have not healed yet from the bitter, destructive, fight that took place here between public school and private school forces in the years from 1974 until 1980. The battle eventually involved the Governor of South Carolina, and required a legislative act to bring the fight to a temporary compromise.

“You would almost be driven to the conclusion that a private school just can’t peacefully coexist with public schools,” is the moral one public school official drew from the battle.

In 1974, public school officials, “having weathered the worse of our integration troubles,” began to feel the pinch of a “dilapidated and unsafe,” school plant, and had some studies made of the needed improvements, one of which was done by a blue ribbon and apparently non-partisan committee of local people, some of whom had children in Beaufort Academy. A bond issue of $24.5 million was decided upon.

“Everything changed when better public education had a price tag on it,” says Nancy Thomas, one of those who got into the fight. She was one of a group of women who had worked together in the League of Women Voters in Beaufort and who became the nucleus of the side which fought for the public schools. The group included a former nun, a black woman who created and runs an organization of child care centers in the Low Country, a former high school teacher–most of these women were in their thirties and had small children in the public schools. They were guided by Robert Salisbury, the county superintendent of schools, a tough, aggressive and politically astute administrator.

The most determined and the most forthrightly belligerent opposition seemed to come from just one man. He is Charles Stockell, a retired Army colonel, executive director of the Beaufort Chamber of Commerce, and an

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instructor in international relations in the University of South Carolina (Beaufort). Stockell had previously been a spokesman for conservative causes locally. In the school issue, he announced that he was spokesman for the Committee for Accountable Schools. He spoke and he appeared on TV, radio, at civic groups.

No officers of his committee were ever announced, and no membership list was ever published. No public accounting of the monies spent in Stockell’s fight was ever made.

The Board of Education announced that it was going to advertise for bids on its bond issue on December 19, 1979. On December 14, two men and Stockell’s committee sued to prevent the bond sale.

This effectively stopped the bond sale, a local state senator settled the dispute by offering a compromise which was incorporated in a bill he introduced in the state legislature which gave the schools the right to sell bonds for $14.5 million.

The bonds were finally sold in 1980. New school buildings are being built but the cost in inflation and from increased interest rates caused by the delay is high if difficult to figure. When the bonds were first being talked about the interest rate was fi.5 percent; when they were sold it was 10.6 percent.

Stockell, even today, will not reveal the names of the Committee for Accountable Schools, except to reply to a questioner: “None of your damned business.” The lawyer who filed the suit says he “attended a couple of meetings where there were about fifteen men.” Charles Fraser, the original developer of Hilton Head Island and Chairman of the Board, Sea Pines Plantation Company, says that he was not a member but “I did attend a couple of meetings.”

One of the ironies of Beaufort Academy is that there is at least some part of the parental group who probably would not put racial segregation as the paramount reason for sending their children there. They would insist they want their children to have “a better education.” Another reason about which they would not be explicit is that they are part of a new class in the South, well-heeled young doctors and dentists and lawyers, mostly from less well-to-do rural or small town farm families in the South, who are ardently determined to fix a social class for themselves and their children–to put behind them all the allegations of being red-necked and bigots. In Beaufort it is, as they call it, “the Academy” which is the institution that performs that social function.

It may be that Beaufort Academy is not better than the public Beaufort High School or Battery Creek. There is really no way to know because Beaufort Academy is not certified by any of the usually-recognized certifying agencies–not by the state department of education, nor by the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges. “Just remember” said one state official, “they don’t have to meet any standards of any kind if they don’t want to or cants.”

The black community in Beaufort county has members on most of the public governing agencies in the county, and feels “relief,” and not frustration at being either able or unable to attend Beaufort Academy. “The worst thing to me,” said one of them, “is that it is training another generation of white Southern leaders in the myths, the stereotypes and the taboos of a segregated society.”

To the coalition of conservatives who apparently are seeking broader ideological objectives Beaufort Academy is a symbol of achievement and the embodiment of their ideology.

One of these is Charles Aimar, a local pharmacist, who founded Beaufort Academy. He is still an active and influential member of the board, and he served for some years as president of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association.

“I don’t believe in government-operated schools at all, not for anybody, not in any grade, high or low,” Aimar said the other day. “I think the free enterprise system can run education in this country and do a good job if it’s given a chance.”

Mr. Aimar says that he was “a contributor to” a “Freedom Library,” in Beaufort which was being run by the local John Birch Society at the time he organized Beaufort Academy. He says he would “rather not answer” on whether he was a John Birch member.

George McMillan its a freelance writer who lives in Frogmore, South Carolina.

Ethics and Equations

By Polly Paddock

Vol. 5, No. 2, 1983, p. 7

I was never much of a math or science student. During high school and college, I went to great lengths to avoid taking any courses in those fields beyond what was absolutely required. Why dissect a fetal pig or struggle with calculus, I figured, when you could be reading Greek tragedy or studying U.S. history?

I’m not defending my admittedly narrow point of view. Students should get just as solid a foundation in math and science as in language and the humanities, I believe.

And today, as we plunge into an industrial and technological revolution that’s fast outstripping our production of skilled workers, the need is greater than ever.

Still, I’m troubled by the sudden burst of attention math and science are receiving. There’s too much talk about using the public schools to train workers–and too little discussion of injecting values and ethics into math and science instruction.

North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, as chairman of the Education Commission of the States, recently appointed a thirty-four-member task force to reassess the nation’s educational goals.

“. . . The most important thing we can do to increase economic growth and provide more high-paying jobs,” Gov. Hunt said, “is to provide an excellent education that in strong in areas like math and science.”

The public schools, he added, must begin to “provide education for economic growth, not just for citizenship, not just because education is a nice thing to have . . . ”

Well, OK–nobody can quarrel with the need for economic growth. And it’s logical to assume that beefing up math and science instruction will help provide that. Students today get too little classroom time in those fields; the shortage of math and science teachers is alarming. And the lack of skilled workers in such areas as electronics, engineering and telecommunications is a hindrance to the kind of economic development we so desperately need.

But one of the reasons that education IS a “nice thing to have” is because it gives you context. The lessons of history, literature, religion, philosophy and ethics are critical to all fields, especially science and technology. Without them, we would have highly trained–but possibly valueless–automatons making vital decisions about creating and destroying life, altering the environment, defying what were once considered the immutable laws of nature.

Surely that’s not what we want. Yet educators and public officials are scrambling so hard to find quick solutions to the math and science lag that they aren’t always looking at the long-range implications of their actions.

Pay math and science teachers more than those in other fields, some suggest; give them a wide range of incentives to stick with teaching rather than be lured into lucrative industry jobs. Increase the number of classroom hours devoted to math and science, many argue.

But what is the effect on underpaid teachers of English, say, or history? What subject areas begin to get less teaching time? What statement does our society want to make about how we assess the relative importance of technology and the humanities?

Both U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell and N.C. State University Chancellor Bruce R. Poulton have, in recent speeches, spoken admiringly about the rigorous math and science requirements in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe communist bloc nations. U.S. attention to these disciplines has been far too lax, both men said; it’s hardly a coincidence, they implied, that the Soviets are beating us in the race to produce engineers and other scientific experts.

That may be true, as far as it goes. But the Soviet Union is not exactly famous for its devotion to the humanities, or for the encouragement of creative, independent thinking among students. Those are qualities we claim to value highly in this country, attributes we deem essential to an enlightened citizenry. We must not lose sight of that in the mad race to turn out a new generation of science and math whiz kids.

In a recent editorial bemoaning the “deterioration” of our math and science capability. The Washington Post asserted that a “romantic bias against technology (has) inflicted real damage on the schools and their students.” While I’m not convinced that such a bias has ever existed, I can’t see how substituting a pragmatic bias against the humanities can possibly serve us well.

What we need at this point, I think, is a national reassessment of how much attention our schools are giving to ALL academic disciplines–and how much in the way of resources we as a society are willing to provide the schools to do their job. We may indeed need to beef up our math and science curricula, but ONLY as one part of a rigorous, total education that focuses on ethics as well as equations.

Governor Hunt’s task force on educational goals has said it hopes to involve parents and other interested citizens in its assessment. I suggest that those of us troubled by simplistic rhetoric about the math and science lag make ourselves heard; letters should be addressed to the Task Force on Education for Economic Growth, c/o Gov. James Hunt, Capitol Building, Raleigh, N.C. 27611.

Polly Paddock is an editorial page writer for the Charlotte Observer.